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On Friday, August 8, 2014, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles (LAFLA) will present Cuatro Corridos, a chamber opera addressing one of the most critical human rights issues of our time: human trafficking. Based on true events, the one-hour production tells the stories of women trapped in a cycle of prostitution and slavery in and around the San Diego/Tijuana border region and represents an unprecedented collaboration between internationally acclaimed Mexican and US-based creative artists.

The benefit event will take place at 7:30 p.m. at The Colburn School’s Zipper Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Ticket price for the benefit is $100 and includes general admission to the performance and to the post performance reception. $75 of the ticket price is a tax-deductible contribution to LAFLA and will help support its services to victims of human trafficking who are forced to work in the sex trade, sweatshops, fields and even private homes under exploitative and abusive conditions and for meager or non-existent wages.

Celebrating its 85th anniversary as Los Angeles’ frontline law firm for poor and low-income people and communities, LAFLA’s services include a range of specialized legal services to aid and empower human trafficking victims to escape exploitation and pursue their legal rights. LAFLA’s Executive Director Silvia R. Argueta says of the event, “We feel that Cuatro Corridos is a beautiful, engaging, and innovative way for LAFLA to draw attention to this critical issue and rally support to help fight against this form of modern-day slavery and a humanitarian crisis that affects those most vulnerable among us.”

Cuatro Corridos had its first performance at the Conrad Prebys Music Center at the University of California, San Diego in May, 2013, with subsequent performances in Tijuana, Dallas, and Albuquerque. The innovative project seeks to heighten public awareness about human trafficking by offering public forums in conjunction with performances. Cuatro Corridos has been the recipient of support from the MAP Fund for the Performing Arts/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, UC MEXUS, and most recently, by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Join American Composers Orchestra (ACO) for its 23rd annual Underwood New Music Readings and look behind the scenes at the process involved in bringing brand new orchestral music to life. The Readings will feature new, stylistically diverse music from seven composers at the early stages of their careers: Andy Akiho (Tarnished Mirrors), Melody Eötvös (Beetles, Dragons, and Dreamers), Robert Honstein (Rise), Jared Miller (Contrasted Perspectives – Two Surrealist Portraits), Kyle Rotolo (Apophis), Harry Stafylakis (Brittle Fracture), and Wang A-Mao (Characters in Theatre).

ACO Music Director George Manahan leads the Readings, along with mentor composers ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel, Robert Beaser, Olly Wilson, and Julia Wolfe. One composer will be chosen to receive a $15,000 commission to write a new piece for ACO to be premiered during the orchestra’s 2015-2016 season. In addition, audience members will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite pieces, and the composer chosen as the “Audience Choice” winner will be commissioned to compose an original mobile phone ringtone, available for everyone who votes.

FREE and open to the public. Part of the inaugural NY PHIL BIENNIAL.

American Composers Orchestra’s 23rd Annual Underwood New Music ReadingsThe DiMenna Center for Classical Music
450 West 37th Street, NYC

ACO’s Underwood New Music Readings Ticket Information:
Admission to ACO’s Underwood New Music Readings is free, but reservations are required. The cost for the Career Development Seminar is $25, which includes lunch. Reservations for the Readings and the Seminar can be made at www.americancomposers.org/tickets.

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These performances are made possible in part by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

On Sunday, January 12 at 3 PM, the Grammy nominated North/South Chamber Orchestra under the direction of its founder composer/conductor Max Lifchitz welcomes the New Year with a free-admission concert featuring works by composers from Europe and the Americas

On Friday, December 13, 2013 at 8 pm, the New York City Master Chorale, under the direction of Artistic Director Thea Kano, opens its eighth season with a “Holiday Concert,” featuring Camille Saint-Saëns’ Christmas Oratorio and the New York City premiere of Paul Leavitt’s Magnificat. The concert, to be held at the Church of Saint Ignatius of Antioch (552 West End Avenue at 87th Street), features organist James Kennerley and phenomenal soloists from the Chorale. Tickets are $35 (general admission) or $25 (student/senior) and can be purchased atwww.nycmasterchorale.org or at the door, space permitting.

On October 15, 2013, composer Christopher Bono releases two new singles, Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra, performed by The New York Virtuoso Singers led by music director Harold Rosenbaum. These choral works will be available on Bono’s label Our Silent Canvas, distributed digitally by Naxos and released on limited edition 7” vinyl. The recordings were made at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York by Grammy-winning producer Silas Brown.

Visual artist DZO Olivier has created original illustrations for the cover art for Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra recordings, intimately influenced by Bono’s music and the concepts it explores. Videos inspired by these works created by film artists Tobias Stretch (Radiohead, Deftones) and Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir (Sigur Rós) will be released on November 5, 2013.

Bono describes Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra as contemplating the search for a modern form of spirituality. He says, “Both works explore a path to transcendence or ‘true being’ through union with the cosmos – The Unexcelled Mantra from a Mahayana Buddhist point of view and Unity from the Western philosophical tradition of Plato.”

Unity is a choral piece based on some of the musical and philosophical concepts of Plato’s Republic. The chosen text was taken from a section of the Republic in which Plato discusses the power of mathematics, but Bono immediately saw it could also be viewed as a metaphor for the phenomenon of meditation. He says, “This multi-dimensional observation was a key inspiration for me when writing the work, both considering the mathematical qualities of music and the esoteric concepts of achieving union with the All.” In addition, Bono experimented with the power Plato claimed existed in the Dorian and Phrygian modes. According to Plato, the Dorian would “fittingly imitate the utterances and accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare,” while the Phrygian was suitable “for a man engaged in works of peace.”

The Unexcelled Mantra is a setting of text from the Heart Sutra, a sacred text in Mahayana Buddhism on understanding Shunyata, or Emptiness, in order to realize Nirvana. The mantra reads “gaté gaté paragaté parasamgaté bodhi svaha,” which can be translated as “Go, go, go beyond, go totally beyond, be rooted in the ground of enlightenment.”

The release of Unity and The Unexcelled Mantra follows Bono’s first classical album, Invocations, a chamber music collection released in fall 2012 and on vinyl in August 2013. The originality and inventiveness of Invocations was noted by composer and writer Frank Oteri in NewMusicBox, who wrote, “While much of 21st-century contemporary composition is not beholden to any rules, to the extent that I could probably claim everyone to be an ‘outsider’ in some ways, Bono’s music sounds as though everything he writes is something he is discovering for the very first time, even if there are clear reference points throughout to the sound worlds of other composers from both our own time and other eras.”

Christopher Bono entered the world of classical music much later than most of his contemporaries. He spent his childhood and teenage years devoted to baseball; in 1999 he was drafted by the Seattle Mariners but an injury kept him from playing. Filling the void left by the end of his athletic endeavors, Bono began playing the guitar when he was 21, and for several years he toured, recorded, and performed in an alternative roots-rock style. In his mid-20s, he made the choice to learn classical composition techniques in order to more fully realize his music. For seven years, in nearly hermetic isolation, he taught himself to read music, and studied composition independently with Juilliard professor Kendall Briggs and at La Scola Cantorum in Paris.

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A concert of works by renowned American composer Michael Hersch will be presented at the DiMenna Center for the Arts in New York City on the evening of October 19.

Photograph by Richard Anderson.

Also regarded as one of today’s more formidable pianists, Hersch is the subject of a new documentary film, The Sudden Pianist, which focuses on his life and his work for the piano. At the Oct 19 concert, Hersch will perform some of the music featured in the film: selections from his 2 and a half-hour solo piano work, The Vanishing Pavilions. (A screening of the film, which was released earlier in 2013 and has already garnered significant festival interest, will take place at the Producers’ Club on the morning of the concert; more information about the film can be found at thesuddenpianist.com.) This concert marks Hersch’s only second public appearance as a pianist in New York in the last ten years.

Also on the October 19 all-Hersch program will be “in the snowy margins” for unaccompanied violin; the New York premiere of “of ages manifest” for unaccompanied alto saxophone; Five Fragments for unaccompanied violin; and the New York premiere of How Far the Cradle for soprano and piano. Artists joining the composer on the program are violinist Miranda Cuckson, saxophonist Gary Louie, soprano Ah Young Hong, and pianist Michael Sheppard.

Saturday, October 19 at 8pm
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music
Mary Flagler Cary Hall
450 West 37th Street
New York, NY 10018

Free admission. No reservations required.
For more information, visit here.

Part found-object sonic sculpture, part new music performance, and part interactive conversation about human relationships with objects, Batterie-en-Valise is currently presenting a suite of five original compositions entitled, “The Question Concerning Technology.” Recent performances include HERE Arts Center and Barbès; coming soon to World Maker Faire, 2013.

Five gutted-out vintage suitcases – each housing a collection of carefully curated found objects – transform into a cacophonous jungle gym of repurposed harmonic assemblages and other dangling curiosities.

Created by Brooklyn-based found-percussionist Eric Farber, featuring Dylan Thurston, the music juxtaposes a long history of traditional rhythms with hyper-contemporary breakbeats and object-oriented “samples.”

TIGUE Percussion Trio

TIGUE Percussion Trio is the latest project from Matt Evans, Amy Garapic, and Carson Moody. Founded in early 2012, TIGUE presents contemporary music of friends, contemporaries, and themselves through a lens of percussion elements. TIGUE has recently presented at The Stone, The Color Field Festival and The Beethoven Festival.

The Manhattan Choral Ensemble will premiere three newly-commissioned works about New York City, followed by favorite folksongs, partsongs and madrigals. At intermission the audience will select its favorite piece, to receive the grand prize and an encore performance.